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There's a difference between making a point and having an agenda. We don't have an agenda to change the political system. We have a more selfish agenda, to entertain ourselves. We feel a frustration with the way politics are handled and the way politics are handled within the media.
-Jon Stewart (thanks Tim)

The Blog, The Press, The Media: The Road to Nemesis
To Fisk or Not to Fisk?
So far over twenty light and sober responses are appended to the Road to Surfdom’s entry on why people blog. Nemesis started the blog rolling and Tim Dunlop being Tim happily returns to blogging virtual horses and dragons.
Barrista and I started gently with our fingers passing on emails and now the addiction has taken the entire arms (smile).
Tim Dunlop writes: I got into blogging accidentally and was mainly interested in it as a way of writing a diary of my time in the US. But I pretty quickly became interested in the democratic aspects of it--the idea of potentially having a way of participating in public discussion about politics and social issues--and so I started to linking to blogs and they started linking to me and pretty soon I was part of the blogosphere.
Two big events changed how Surfdom developed. The first was the Washington sniper. My posts about living here during that fun time made me visible to American blogs and brought me a readership amongst them and their readers.
Then I got caught up in the whole war-in-Iraq debate, which was probably the galvanising moment for a lot of bloggers, if not for the political blogosphere in general, even more so than 9/11.
The fact that I get quite a few people through these days is something of an amazement to me.
I write about and mention stuff that interests me with no attempt at all at being comprehensive in my coverage. I write largely because I think it is fun to write.
• And I see value in arguing, though I wish everyone just agreed with me ...; [Dina Musing about Blogging community ; Taxonomy: The Dreaded T-Word, Or, Why Doesn't Google Know How To Classify Blogs? ]
• · Dear Oprah More and more readers are leaving their newspapers on their doorsteps, unopened and unread. But Oprah's magazine might hold a few answers
• · · NYT's Okrent explains why he named a "coward" blogger ; [Schwenk: Naming me served one purpose -- to harm me]
• · · · Tim Porter: Even though Julia Sellers acknowledges that journalists just leave a bad taste in many people's mouths she still wants to fulfill her desire to be a reporter because as a journalist it is your responsibility to report the truth to the public ; [It is a daily struggle to get fair and balanced news Apologize? For What? ]
• · · · · It's the ultimate global marketplace, raking in billions of dollars and attracting thousands of new buyers and sellers every day. Kevin Airs explores the online bazaar of eBay What am I bid? Who am I? Imrich
• · · · · · You’re so vain, you probably think I’m talking about you-you’re so vain…Bombay Writers' Cafe I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again
[We're all Christ and we're all Hitler. We are trying to make Christ's message contemporary. We want Christ to win. What would he have done if he had advertisements, T.V., records, films and newspapers? The miracle today is communication. So let's use it.
-John Lennon '69 Ich bin ein Berliner: Herbert Kundler, 77, Cold War-era broadcaster in Berlin; Anthony Hecht, 81, was a formal poet who wrote about war, corruption, taking on society in the largest sense]